bio.

Jens is a multi-disciplinary and fiercely independent artist who has been making and presenting work for audiences in Australia and Europe for more than 35 years. He is a director, performer, inventor, tinkerer, producer and mentor, with a strong interest in creating participatory and empowering art experiences.

Jens incorporates elements of puppetry, interactive mechanical sculptures, video, circus and music into his highly visual theatre productions that explore human relationships through the world of animated objects. His body of work includes family theatre, multidisciplinary community art projects, playful kinetic installations, and circus productions.

He is the uncontested frontman of his one- man shows, quirkologist, established collector, inventor and transformer of thingamabobs and other wondrous oddities of day to day life. His unusual, visual and contraption- loaded theatre productions are touring extensively in metropolitan, regional and remote areas all over Australia. Up to date, his shows and projects took him to 186 Australian venues, to many of them with multiple visits.

When he is in Melbourne, he likes to spend time in his working space 'Kerfuffle Studios', where he continues be be a 'curioso', experimenting with audio-visual, robotics, projection mapping, stage craft, visual sorcery and old sewing machines.

A bit of history

He started as a circus performer and then trained at the Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris. European collaborations include Phillipe Genty Company (France), National Theatre Stuttgart (Germany), the National Theatre Karlsruhe (Germany) and World Expo Lisbon 1998 (Portugal). Jens relocated to Australia in 2009.

In 2024, Jens received a national Impact Award from PAC Australia for his contribution to regional and remote touring. Jens won the Adelaide Fringe Award for ‘Best Production for Children’ in 2013 with ‘Squaring the Wheel’ and got nominated for the same award in 2017 with ‘Loose Ends’ . In 2023, he got nominated for the Green Room Awards, Best Costume and Set Design for ‘Whalebone’ . In 2011, he won the ‘Best Street Performer Award’ at the Apollo Bay Festival

For the last three years he assessed applications for Creative Victoria for their Creative Learning Partnerships program and is now also an assessment panel member for Creative Australia. In 2021, he was mentoring fellow artists through the Regional Arts Victoria Creative Workers in Schools program.